What are evolving towards?
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Basically true, I guess. In another book about the same subject there's a nifty story about an imaginary world, with nothing but humans and lions (grr) Due to mutation (gene replication error) one of the children gets little longer legs than average -> s/he can run faster... Book claims, that in about generations, most humans will have longer legs than in the "beginning".
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: What do you think? I think you haven't thought this through, and need to read the subject more widely :-) Regrdless of who you have offspring with, you always pass on half of your genetic material, the other half coming from your partner. Therefore, while your genes do "better" if you have more children, it doesn't follow that you need multiple partners to do that - multiple offspring with a single partner is adequate. The advantages of having offspring with multiple partners is an increased variation of offspring - because your genes will be paired with a larger range of other peoples genes. This increased variation, once selected upon, may help increase the influence of your genes in the population. There are disadvantages too - your time and resources would be split amongst multiple partners offspring at the same time, thus you increase your risk of all your offspring not surviving. Concentrating on just one offspring (or "batch" of) would increase their chances considerably. Therefore you could very well do better having one or a small number of partners over time and just concentrating on the offspring from that with them, because overall, that works better. Which is more or less the case in most mammalian species. Howver, there are some mammals which have a "harem" approach - some seals, for example. The relevant literature (such as Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, for starters) discusses sex ratios and different breeding strategies and so forth. Given that Homo. animals (ie, us and the primates) are largely monogamous at present and have been for millenia (AFAIK), if such a change was going to occur, it would probably take thousands of years or more. There would also need to be a selection pressure that forced the move - I cannot see what that would be for us.
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Basically true, I guess. In another book about the same subject there's a nifty story about an imaginary world, with nothing but humans and lions (grr) Due to mutation (gene replication error) one of the children gets little longer legs than average -> s/he can run faster... Book claims, that in about generations, most humans will have longer legs than in the "beginning".
vcorreia wrote: Basically true, I guess. In another book about the same subject there's a nifty story about an imaginary world, with nothing but humans and lions (grr) Due to mutation (gene replication error) one of the children gets little longer legs than average -> s/he can run faster... Book claims, that in about generations, most humans will have longer legs than in the "beginning". You're sort of right - however these things reach limits. "Arms races" between species will reach limits based on other pressures - availability of resources, for example. For example, it is initially conceivable that in a population of humans and lions, the running speed of both species would just increase in an unlimited way, until people and lions could run at the speed of light! However, increased speed also requires increased energy - food and water. At some point, if a variation in the human population allowed for a person being so fast that they need an unavailably high level of resources to maintain that speed, they would die of starvation and not benefit from the extra speed at all. Thus an equilibrium (a cycle within a range) is reached until the environment and thus the selection pressures change again.
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? Most people that I know do this already. If not polyamorous, then simply because of the number of girlfriends/wives they go through during the course of life. Marc Microsoft MVP, Visual C# MyXaml MyXaml Blog RealDevs.Net
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Well, I think you have a basic (but VERY common) misunderstanding of evolution. It doesn't work "towards" anything. I took a class on evolution in college (as a gen-ed), and a couple things from it have always stuck with me. One of them is that the notion of "survival of the fittest" is a bit of a misnomer--it should be "survival of the fit." Subtle, but important difference, and one that more accurately describes evolution, or more to the point, natural selection. The other thing that has always stuck with me from that class directly relates to your original question: In primates, species that have a GREAT difference physiologically between males and females tend to have males that take many female partners, but each female stays with the same male (can't remember the word for this). Species that have very similar physiologies between the sexes tend to be monogomous for life. Species that have some, but not great, differences between the sexes tend to be polygomous (both males and females). This is the category humans fall into, physiologically. Very interesting, IMHO. Also, because all three of these systems are well represented in the world today (in both non-humans and humans :)), it shows they are all viable from a natural selection standpoint. A healthy gene pool is created by having lots of combinations available, and this happens even in monogomous relationships. This is obvious just by looking at siblings--they can be very different from each other.
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: What do you think? I think, like me, most men aren't really smart enough to keep up with even one woman (even if we don't care to admit it as a general rule!). If evolution requires that we maintain multiple relationships, we're gonna die out. Fast. Christopher Duncan Today's Corporate Battle Tactic Unite the Tribes: Ending Turf Wars for Career and Business Success The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? Based on the people i've met who tend to go for this (screw anything that moves, with little or no thought to the consequences), i tend to doubt it. Their offspring seem to survive more in spite of the parents than because of them. Given the direction our society is moving in (earlier sexual maturity, later societal maturity), i expect the importance of parents who focus more on providing for their existing offspring than on creating new ones to increase.
You**'re one microscopic cog** in his catastrophic plan... -
I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: What do you think? There have been quite a few psychologists who have ruefully noted that the undereducated and less intelligent of our species tend to have the most children. No, I'm not taking a swipe at the third-world with that statement because that trend isn't clear when comparing across national and cultural boundaries. I'm talking purely in terms of looking within any single nation and subculture. Low intelligence is correlated* with having larger numbers of children. Since genetics plays a role in intelligence, then logically, we should be becoming dumber and dumber with each generation. (Although the Flynn Effect[^] seems to indicate that we are getting smarter and smarter. Maybe the Flynn Effect is a statistical fluke or maybe it is a reflection of better nutrition or something else.) There are some people (like Stephan Hawking) who think that we need to take control of our evolution by manipulating our genes. In that case, we are evolving towards whatever we want. * be sure to look up the definition of "correlated" before you "debunk" that statement by providing examples of smart people who have a lot of children. ----------------------------------------------------- Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On' - The Onion "Moore's prominent presence in the news brings to light some serious questions, such as 'Can't he at least try to look presentable?'" - The Onion
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Sijin wrote: What do you think? There have been quite a few psychologists who have ruefully noted that the undereducated and less intelligent of our species tend to have the most children. No, I'm not taking a swipe at the third-world with that statement because that trend isn't clear when comparing across national and cultural boundaries. I'm talking purely in terms of looking within any single nation and subculture. Low intelligence is correlated* with having larger numbers of children. Since genetics plays a role in intelligence, then logically, we should be becoming dumber and dumber with each generation. (Although the Flynn Effect[^] seems to indicate that we are getting smarter and smarter. Maybe the Flynn Effect is a statistical fluke or maybe it is a reflection of better nutrition or something else.) There are some people (like Stephan Hawking) who think that we need to take control of our evolution by manipulating our genes. In that case, we are evolving towards whatever we want. * be sure to look up the definition of "correlated" before you "debunk" that statement by providing examples of smart people who have a lot of children. ----------------------------------------------------- Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On' - The Onion "Moore's prominent presence in the news brings to light some serious questions, such as 'Can't he at least try to look presentable?'" - The Onion
This stupid have more children, but their children are more likely to die without reproducing too. I'd say more, but I don't have time to do a 10,000 year research project on the subject.
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I was reading "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins, it got me thinking that if evolution favours those who can make copies of themselves efficiently, then are we evolving towards a behaviour wherein we will take on multiple partners in our lifetime? What do you think?
I always think that the idea of a compiler that compiles another compiler or itself is rather incestuous in a binary way. - Colin Davies My .Net Blog
Sijin wrote: What are evolving towards? Well, according to Star Trek - Voyager, we are becoming Large Lizards. Sounds about right. :sigh: I do not mind getting old. It beats all the other options that can think of.
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This stupid have more children, but their children are more likely to die without reproducing too. I'd say more, but I don't have time to do a 10,000 year research project on the subject.
Henry miller wrote: This stupid have more children, but their children are more likely to die without reproducing too. The odds of someone dying by stupidity before they reproduce is an insignificant factor when compared to the number of children they tend to have. For example, if (on average) stupid people have 4 children and smart people have 2, then for the "intelligence balance" to remain constant, fully 50% of stupid people must die before reproducing. As a society, we are nowhere close to having 50% of stupid people die before reproducing. ----------------------------------------------------- Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On' - The Onion "Moore's prominent presence in the news brings to light some serious questions, such as 'Can't he at least try to look presentable?'" - The Onion